1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a film marker for specifying the body postures of an animal photographed in roentgenograms. According to the application of the film marker of the present invention, the body posture of an animal's skeleton in an image photographed in a roentgenogram can be specified at a glance by a veterinarian belonging to any country in the world, because the film marker of the present invention is expressed by a symbol, i.e. the figure of an animal being common to the whole world.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the case when animals are photographed in roentgenograms, body postures of an animal to be photographed are basically the following four positions. Namely, they are (1) a prone position wherein an animal is laid on a photographic table with its face down and photographed dorsally (dorsal: D), (2) a supine position wherein an animal is laid on a photographic table with its face up and photographed ventrally (ventral: V), (3) a lateral position wherein an animal is laid on a photographic table with its face sideways and photographed laterally (lateral: L), and (4) an oblique position wherein an animal is held on a photographic table in its slant position and photographed obliquely (oblique: O). In addition, it is necessary for discriminating a right-hand (right: R) photograph from a left-hand (left: L) one in both the cases of the lateral and oblique positions, respectively.
When the whole body of an animal is photographed panoramically, the body posture of the animal in the photograph is quite obvious. However, there were many cases where body postures of an animal photographed in roentgenograms were not clear in the event when the animal was partially photographed, for example, only a backbone or a hip joint of the animal was photographed. Under the circumstances, sheets of alphabetical characters such as "D", "V", "L", "O" as well as "R" and "L" made of a metal such as lead have heretofore been attached to the outside of a film cassette with an adhesive tape at the time of photographing in the United States of America and the other English-speaking countries for recording the body posture of the animal photographed on the film. More specifically, alphabetical characters "LL" appeared on any corner of an X-ray film represents a left-handedly laterally recumbent position of an animal photographed, and characters "RL" on any corner of an X-ray film means a right-handedly laterally recumbent position of an animal photographed, respectively.
While it is self-evident for American veterinarians that an alphabetical character "D" means a prone position, and a character "V" means a supine position, respectively, such indications by alphabetical characters based on English terms are unfamiliar for the peoples other than English-speaking peoples, so that there is a possibility of misunderstanding for the former peoples in case of examining skeletons of animals photographed in roentgenograms to which have been applied unfamiliar indications. On the other hand, if such indications have been applied to roentgenograms by employing the characters other than alphabetical characters, e.g. Chinese or, Arabic characters, the peoples who are unfamiliar for these characters or languages are very inconvenient or substantially impossible to use the indications based on these characters. In such a case, the application of a film marker onto any corner of a roentgenogram is almost useless for specifying body postures of an animal to be photographed.